Exterior cleaning in Ringwood
Roof cleaning, render and masonry soft washing, gutters cleared and block paving brought back, across Ringwood, Poulner and the BH24 estates.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
Ringwood gives two different answers, and which one you need depends on what you own. Old brick and lime around the Market Place wants a soft wash and next to no pressure. Concrete tile and block paving out on the estates will take a good deal more.
Ringwood cleaning tends to start from a familiar list. A frontage in the old part of town has gone dark and streaked and there is nowhere to work from except the pavement. A roof on one of the estates carries moss across a whole slope and makes the house look twenty years older than it is. Or a block of flats has gutters nobody has been into for years and green running down the render below every joint.
We come and survey it surface by surface, because a painted town frontage, a concrete tiled roof and a block paved drive want three different methods and two of them want almost no force. You are told what will come up, what needs treating and then leaving to work, and what we would leave alone. The site visit is free and the written price carries each surface on its own line.
The work
Cleaning a market town and the estates around it
Town centre frontages, with nowhere to stand. Around a fifth of the housing here predates the First World War, and the streets off the Market Place are soft brick, lime mortar and painted render with the odd pebbledash addition.
Nearly one home in five in Ringwood is a terrace, so there is often no side access at all: hoses come through the house or over a wall, and the water has to be caught rather than left to sheet down the pavement. That changes the method more than the surface does. Old brickwork and lime joints are soft washed at low pressure with a test patch first, never lanced.
Blocks of flats and their communal gutters. Getting on for three in ten homes in Ringwood are flats, which puts a lot of the town's render, roof and rainwater goods under a managing agent, not one owner. It is the same work priced by elevation and by block: communal render soft washed, the gutters cleared, and the bin stores and drying areas done while the kit is already set up. The leaseholder is often not the person who can order it, so give us the agent and we will quote them direct.
Roof cleaning on the estates at Poulner and Hightown is a different job again. A little over half the town went up between the war and the millennium, which on a roof means concrete interlocking tile now porous enough to hold moss like a pad. The growth is scraped off dry, the tile soft washed at low pressure and treated with a biocide so the spores left behind do not bring the regrowth back inside a year. Nothing is forced under the lap, because that puts water onto the felt instead of into the gutter, and a rocking ridge tile is a repair to sort before the clean, not after it.
Block paving is what most of the newer estates are laid in, and it is re-sanded after washing because the jetting lifts the jointing sand out along with the weed and the algae. Concrete, slab and brick paths take a rotary nozzle. Black spot lichen does not blast off at any pressure and wants treating and time. Sealing is a separate decision and only worth it on paving that is genuinely dry.
Planting is soaked and sheeted first, drains and gullies near the work are covered, cars come off the drive and windows go shut on the side we are on. Everything we spray is a biocide approved for the job and used to its label, which is what the biocides regime the HSE administers requires, and where the run off goes is planned to pollution prevention guidance rather than worked out once a drive is already sheeting water.
How it runs
Soft washing walls, roofs and paths, surface by surface
Thomas comes out to see each wall, roof and path and what has taken hold on it, and the price is his. The written quote treats each surface separately: the method, how plants, glass and doors are protected, how we reach it, and what happens to the water and residue.
You deal with one company for the whole job. Walls and roofs are soft washed with a biocide at low pressure, never blasted, because high pressure strips the face off old brick and drives water into the joints. Plants are wetted and covered, run off is kept out of drains where it should not go, and the site is left clean. If cleaning shows cracked render or loose pointing, we photograph it and price the repair separately; nothing is touched without your agreement.
Cleaning is maintenance and needs no application. What comes after it may: painting or sealing a wall that has never been treated is a change of appearance. Inside the Ringwood Conservation Area that is worth checking with New Forest District Council, and on a listed building consent comes first. Planning Portal guidance on external walls shows where maintaining a wall ends and altering it begins.
Cost
Growth, height and the surface underneath
The same square metre can take two minutes or twenty, so we do not quote a rate. Reach. A terrace off the Market Place where the hose comes through the house, a semi in Poulner with a drive down the side, and a block of flats with walls three storeys up each need their own kit. The work at height rules decide whether it is pole work or a tower.
The surface. Old soft brick and lime pointing take very little pressure. Render and concrete roof tiles take a soft wash. Block paving needs its jointing sand replaced after cleaning, or the blocks start to move.
How long it has been left. Years of lichen and algae need a biocide and time, often a second visit, not more pressure. A light green film comes off in one go.
Where the water goes. On a town centre frontage the run off can reach a street drain, which is why it is controlled, following pollution prevention guidance.
Ask any other quote what method they will use on each surface, what chemical and at what strength, and where the run off goes.
If there is a date
Clean before a sale, a letting or a deadline
Nothing here is a true emergency, but most cleaning has a date on it: a house going on the market, a letting inspection, a block's annual visit or scaffolding about to come down. Tell us the date when you ring. Scheduled work is Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, and if we miss your call we ring you back. We will tell you honestly whether the job can be done properly by then, because a biocide needs time to work.
The one local thing
In a town of flats, the outside is often not yours to book
Ringwood has a far higher share of flats than the villages around it. Getting on for three in ten homes here are flats, which means a great many people looking at a green gable or a gutter full of moss cannot simply book the work.
The freeholder or the managing agent instructs it, it is paid for through the service charge, and once the cost per leaseholder passes a set threshold the landlord has to consult the leaseholders formally before it goes ahead.
That is section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, and it is the reason a job everybody agrees needs doing can still sit for a year. It also means the quote has to be written so that a leaseholder can read it: each elevation, each surface and each method on its own line, rather than one figure for the building.
If you are the leaseholder, the useful move is to hand your agent something specific rather than a complaint. We will come out, look at the block and put a written itemised price together, elevation by elevation, that the agent can take to the other flats. It is worth separating the jobs, too.
Clearing the gutters and outlets on the whole block is ordinary maintenance and rarely needs the same process as a full render wash, so the urgent half can often go ahead while the rest is being agreed. And doing the whole block in one visit takes far less setting up than coming back for one flat at a time, which is money that stays out of the service charge.
Who you are dealing with
Who comes to look at the walls and paths
Ringwood is 8 miles from the Boscombe base we work from, and we also cover Bournemouth. In BH24 we cover the Market Place, Poulner and Hightown, Ashley Heath, Hangersley and Burley. Ashley Heath is in Dorset Council's area, and Burley and Hangersley are planned by the National Park Authority.
Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. The owner is Thomas Hannen, and he comes out to see the surfaces and price them himself. From a verified Checkatrade customer, a 10 out of 10. The look round and the written itemised quote are both free. Before you book a visit in Ringwood, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Ringwood?
Most repairs in Ringwood need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.
| Question | In Ringwood |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest District Council is the planning authority for Ringwood. The National Park boundary runs close by, and the Park's property map shows which side an address falls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Ringwood Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Ringwood. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Ringwood. |
Questions
Questions about exterior cleaning in Ringwood
Ringwood has a conservation area. Does that affect cleaning?
The conservation area hardly affects cleaning. The Ringwood Conservation Area covers the town centre, but a wash is maintenance inside it or out. The town falls under the New Forest planning authority and carries 61 listed entries, the Meeting House and the Manor House among them.
Cleaning is maintenance, so a wash of unlisted brick or render needs no consent from anybody. On a listed frontage the method itself becomes the issue, and we agree that with the conservation officer before anything gets wetted.
The render greens up every autumn. Why here?
Ringwood sits with heath and woodland on its doorstep, and the needles, catkins and leaf mulch that land on sills, ledges and wall tops hold water against the render and feed the algae below. The same mulch loads the flat roof outlets and sits wet against the fascia. A soft wash with a biocide left to work keeps the render clear for longer, and clearing the gutters first stops fresh overflow undoing it.
Can pre-1900 brickwork here be washed without damage?
Not with a lance: nearly a fifth of the housing predates 1919 and the pre-1900 band is the largest single cohort at 13.0%, which means soft handmade brick and lime mortar joints. High pressure strips the fired face off the brick and opens the beds, and the wall then holds more water than it did before. Those elevations get a low pressure wash and a biocide, and the growth dies back over the following weeks.
What is on the written quote for a Ringwood semi?
Every elevation is priced on its own line, along with the gutter run, the soffit and fascia, any conservatory roof and the drive, so you can strike out whatever you do not want doing. Semis are 20.0% of the housing here and the exposed side gable is usually the dirty one, so it often carries more work than the front. Thomas Hannen measures it and writes it up. The visit and the quote are free.
What should I look at from the pavement before calling?
Stand across the road and start at the gutter line. Sagging between brackets, a dark tide mark down the fascia, or plants growing out of the run all say the gutter is full. Then look at the shaded slope and the bottom metre of wall, which greens first on Ringwood's freely draining sandy ground because splashback keeps it wet. Photograph what you can see and we can usually tell you on the phone whether it is a clean or a repair.
Nearby, and next door
Exterior cleaning near Ringwood
Nearby places we also cover for exterior cleaning, with straight-line distances from Ringwood, and the other trades we offer in Ringwood itself.
Exterior cleaning nearby
Our other trades in Ringwood
Exterior cleaning guides
Soft washing vs pressure washing: safe for a roof? How to clean a patio without damaging it Moss on a roof: does it need removing?Builders in Ringwood: all our building work Everything we do in Ringwood Exterior cleaning, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Find out what will come up, and what will not
A free site visit in Ringwood, then a written itemised price with every surface on its own line. Tell us if there is a date to work to.